It’s the cutting edge of advertising – but no more advanced than a cartoon flip book.

A New York ad company has set up a series of streetside advertisements around Manhattan that “move” when a person walks by a series of static panels.

“Oh, my God! It’s cool!” said jewelry salesman Eliot Hernandez, 32, giving a thumbs-up as he walked past and viewed the innovative ad set up in Herald Square, along Sixth Avenue.

Pedestrians see what appears to be a motion picture as they walk by a 60-foot-long series of 15 black boxes hanging from construction scaffolding. Each box has 60 narrow vertical slits that allow a backlit, static photo image to be viewed.

A person walking at a normal pace sees the ad for about 15 seconds, according to Submedia, the company that sets up the patented boxes, paying scaffolding companies and building owners for the space.

The ad – for Lincoln’s new Zephyr sedan – shows the car cruising along a desert landscape shadowed by an unfurling red carpet, ending with the Lincoln logo.

“We travel at a busy pace, and you don’t have to stop for this,” said Submedia CEO Peter Corrigan. “When you walk by, it causes it to work, so it’s perfect for New York.

“It’s the interactivity that makes it fun.”

Submedia has put up five sets of the ad boxes around Manhattan – at Herald Square, near Madison Square Garden, in Greenwich Village, on Great Jones Street and on the east side of Midtown.

The company said was the first time the concept had appeared in the United States.

Lincoln is paying $150,000 a month for its ads to be placed on the boxes for two months, as well as for two sets of illuminated lights that create the illusion of a movie in PATH train tunnels, where Submedia has had a presence for three years.

Submedia estimates that 400,000 people a day walk by the animated ads.

Yesterday, some of those people didn’t even see the ad, as their gaze was distracted by other signs or directed at the sidewalk.

But those who did see the flashing images looked quizzically at them and sometimes stopped to tap on the metal boxes or try to look through the slits to see where the movie was coming from.

“It’s very catchy; it catches the eye,” said 35-year-old Mario Velasquez, an apparel worker who walked by the Herald Square ad. “I didn’t know it was an ad.”

Christina Brosio, 24, a civil engineer who works in the neighborhood, said, “I definitely like the animation. It’s incredible. It’s like seeing it on TV.”

Submedia’s chief technology officer, John Butziger, said the company wants to put the ad boxes in airports – where people-movers and escalators could set the animation into motion for travelers.